We have displacement and a failure to create shared prosperity, but we are not heading to an economy without human labor anytime soon.
Daron Acemoglu – MIT professor
We’re on a Tech Futures voyage driven by COVID and AI, which will unleash a lot more tech. And, it’ll be a bumpy ride. People won’t like it and don’t want it. Let’s go back to our Handy Work Model and look at significant upside and downside risks:
“… corporations across America have flocked to a new management theory: Focus on core competence and outsource the rest. The approach has made companies nimbler, more productive, and has delivered huge profits for shareholders. It has also fueled inequality and helps explain why many working-class Americans are struggling even in an ostensibly healthy economy (COVID).” (1)
A new tech resistance is forming. Neo-Luddites are challenging the deployment of robotic, AI, and frankly all tech. The original Luddites were English textile workers in the early 19th century that objected to the introduction of the mechanical automation of textile weaving, power looms, and spinning frames.
The Luddites destroyed the mechanical looms that threatened their livelihoods. Today, neo-Luddites have the same fear of artificial intelligence, robotics, and automation eliminating their jobs.
Story: Arizona in the U.S. is the worldwide mecca for testing robotic (autonomous) vehicles. Neo Luddites have attacked driverless vehicles two dozen times with knives, rocks, and waving guns to driverless vehicles over the last two years in Arizona.
“In ways large and small, the city (Phoenix) has had an early look at the public misgiving over the rise of artificial intelligence, with city officials hearing complaints about everything from safety to possible job losses.” (2) … “Some analysts say they expect more such behavior as the nation moves into a broader discussion about the potential for driverless cars to unleash colossal changes in American society. The debate touches on fears ranging from eliminating jobs for drivers to ceding control over mobility to autonomous vehicles.”(3)
Soothsayers say Tech Futures will change the fundamental ways you work and live like the Industrial Revolution disrupted work early in the 19th century. Tech soothsayers predict a new industrial order based on AI, for which we are not prepared.
Work Lesson Earned: The history of tech follows reaction patterns such as resistance to the adoption of new ideas. Neo-Luddites are the metaphor of the resistance to tech disruption, AI, and innovation because of perceived mass disruption, elimination of jobs, and displacement of workers.
1. ‘Understand Rising Inequality Consider the Janitors’, New York Times, September 3, 2017.
2. ‘Wielding Rocks and Knives Arizonans Attack Self-Driving Cars’, New York Times,2019. December 31, 2018.
3. Ibid.